March 25: On to the 'Big Smoke'



After scarfing a stack of, what else but, pancakes, we're trotting down the road to see the real Pancakes.

Sun is just peeking over the hills and it's sweater and pullover cap cool.

The Pancake Rocks are a coastal formation, the result of a layering phenomenon called styloebedding, which creates alternate limesone and clay strata. Eons of weathering from wind and wave of the uplifted coast, have sculpted a devil's labyrinth of sea stacks, mini-canyons and recesses, to the delight of tourists and the resident shag colonies. At high tide (which we missed) the waves are forced upward through holes into fountain-like displays. Oooo's and ahahs....

Our cycle today takes us along lovely dark sand beaches (no doubt laced with those nasty sand flies!) and up and over verdent headlands. The route profile is rather sawtoothed and quite tiring. Rick is holding up well but thankful for some lowend granny gears!  We pass Barrytown (have you noticed all the Anglo names on the south island as opposed to all the Maori titled places on the north?) then back inland thru farming communities of Rapahoe and Runanga before reaching Greymouth after 27 miles.

Greymouth, the Big Smoke, is the largest town on the west coast of this south island at 10,000 pop.. It made its mark as a coal mining center and port and reminds us of the Hoquiam/Aberdeen area on Washington's Olympic Peninsula: slightly depressed, blue collar, and proud.

They do have a good Indian restaurant and Rick and I dive into some 5*curries, naan and local beer as the clouds descend and we are enshrouded in mist. I finish the evening out blogging away...